Tohir Solomons

Usability of MTN site

Posted on the October 31st, 2005 under Uncategorized by Tohir

Having to send a quick SMS, I logged into the MTN site. And though it took less than two minutes, there are a few things to be shared from a usability perspective.

Firstly, be careful when using smart names for navigation and menus. The navigation terms are ‘awesome’, but not confidence inspiring. Kept thinking at the back of my mind, ‘Would this mean …’? As Steve Krug puts it, Don’t make me think!

More interesting, was the screen to send the SMS as shown below:

Notice the buttons below: ‘Clear’ is nice and big with a background colour. ‘Send’ is smaller with a dull gray background. I’m highlighting this in particular since I nearly clicked on the bigger button.

Now I know telecommunications in South Africa is damn expensive, but is this not a consciously unethical approach to discourage users from sending SMS’s – designing counter-intuitive interfaces on purpose to save some bucks.

It’s probably a misjudgement on their side, but I can swear that some people really do design interfaces to make users scream.

In any case, I’ve also taken a lesson from their use of colours in buttons. Could this be used (CSS-style) to further enhance usability of an interface, highlight the button users will/should click on next?